


Temporal Power

by euphorbic



Series: Angel of Cities [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Gratuitous Imagery, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pseudoscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:58:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphorbic/pseuds/euphorbic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the Power’s clockwork appearance in the station over the span of several weeks that has led Charles to assume he’s bonded and safe to read. Charles knows it’s possible the Power can feel the indiscretion, but his curiosity wins out. Placing his fingertips to his temple, he reaches through the crowd and touches the creature’s mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temporal Power

 

Charles has never much liked the Powers, or Angels as they are often called, though he supposes he should be grateful to them. Angels made mutants a lesser threat when they began to appear and thereby ushered mutants into worldwide human society. Powers are rumored to be embodiments of the city they represent and the few Charles has met have conducted themselves with an inscrutable arrogance that chafes each time he’s had the awed misfortune to meet one. Most of the populace dislikes coming in contact with a Power; they often enforce conflicting codes with austere brutality.

When they are not being called their proper name, Powers, or the common parlance, Angels, they are called Flying Monkeys; flunkies for short. Their free will and degree of sentience has always been in question. With their high functioning abilities, they appear at least on a level with monkeys, goes the joke. They are not a species born, but Manifested. Their forms are usually human, both male and female, though they do not appear to procreate. Angels have never appeared as children and only very rarely as teenagers.

They are a subject of fascination among the populace; especially academia. Charles and his peers often discuss what they would find, if they could get a Power’s fingernail clipping under a microscope. No Power’s DNA has ever been collected. No Power has ever been subdued for capture: those that have made attempts, and there have been many, rarely survive the encounters.

For scholarly reasons, and sheer overwhelming curiosity, Charles wants to read an Angel’s mind. Other telepaths he’s spoken with have told him it’s a risk worth taking at least once. A Power’s mind, they say, is otherworldly and capable of deepening a telepath’s understanding. But always make sure to only read the minds of the bonded, for rumor dictates that Angels exhibit a tendency to imprint with telepaths. Jean Grey, Betsy Braddock, and his colleague, Emma Frost are all proof to that particular pudding.

Urban legend holds that unbonded Powers have erratic and highly unstable behaviors. Other Angels supposedly subdue these rogues if they lose control before a new imprint. Unbonded, Charles has always assumed, would be easy to pick out.

The Power Charles has selected is a striking specimen, as they always are. His eyes are fierce as he strides through the crowded station; always at exactly 7:13AM. Charles often sees him through bleary eyes when he drinks his morning coffee at the vaulted station’s café before work.

Like a shark through a school of minnows, the Power cuts through the crowd. As is normal for the tall Power, his manifestation is military in appearance. His uniform is cut of fine grey wool, but beyond the two rows of black metal buttons, belt buckle, and other fittings, his raiment holds no mark of distinction or rank. In fact, other than the chill that runs through the populace as he passes, or the slow eddy of his short hair, there is little to indicate he is an Angel.

It is the Power’s clockwork appearance in the station over the span of several weeks that has led Charles to assume he’s bonded and safe to read. Charles knows it’s possible the Power can feel the indiscretion, but his curiosity wins out. Placing his fingertips to his temple, he reaches through the crowd and touches the creature’s mind.

Charles knows three things. White light. White noise. White hot panic.

Then Charles knows nothing, but before long, he knows everything, especially Erik, who was previously Max, who was previously Magnus, who was previously unnamed, who was also previously unnamed, who was even yet unnamed and ever would be, world without end.

All that falls away reforms. Anything is everything and all is the first law of thermodynamics. _Oh, we got something right._ Creation is the alpha and entropy the omega in one eternal round. _Paradox?_ Matter passes unto matter and energy unto energy and both are bound together with time. Individual consciousness is the stuff of arrogance and mythopoeia. _The Buddhists always seemed so sensible._

“Charles Francis Xavier,” Erik says, his once-harsh voice smooth and confident, “I cannot remove the drink from your clothing, but I can get you to your work station before the hour.”

Charles’ synapses taste burned. His mouth feels like ozone. The tops of his thighs smell razed. A feeling of intense movement is sloughing off his mind.  “I think I need to use a sick day.”

His hands fumble with his phone until it is no longer in them: Erik’s hands on his feel like the warm static of a vinyl recording.

“Direct me to Charles Francis Xavier’s superior. Is the head of the board his superior? Then do it.”

Charles’ vision is not clearing. It is as if he has stared into the sun at point blank distance. He isn’t sure who Erik is commanding; he can’t feel anyone nearby for all he hears hushed whispers and mutterings. He tries to reach out with his mind, but the wide-open space he touches in the process is too frightening. It’s kenophobia of the mental sphere.

“You are in charge of Charles Francis Xavier? You will immediately issue him the use of a sick day by the authority of Temporal Power Erik.”

The phone is then pressed back into Charles’ hands. Charles frowns as he takes it. He hopes that the one-sided conversation he’s just heard will never make sense, because it sounded distinctly as if Erik had just ordered around one of his colleagues on the university’s Board of Directors.

The warm hands are on him, lifting him up. “Shall I return you to your space or do you wish to inhabit mine?”

Erik’s voice is reminiscent of countless diaphanous wings and metal chitin. His breath is hot and moves Charles’ hair in a moment far more brief than the endless movements that correspond to Erik’s auburn locks.

“Which is closer?” Charles chokes.

“Mine,” Erik returns, patiently holding on as Charles’ equilibrium returns, but his vision and telepathy do not.

“Let’s go to mine, anyway.” He begins to give Erik the address, but he doesn’t know if the Power even knows how addresses work. “Do you want the address? Longitude and latitude?”

“I know where to go,” Erik responds. “I’ll guide you.”

“You were unbonded, weren’t you?” Charles feels stupid even as he asks.

“That implies that I once was not Bonded,” the Power replies, arm snaking across Charles’ back to steady and guide. Erik’s fingers fit perfectly along the grooves of Charles’ ribs. It is like his DNA had Erik’s hand in mind before it had even been passed on from his parents.  Erik’s logic, however, does not click the same way.

The journey to Charles’ inner city apartment is hazy and punctuated with tastes of iron, nickel, and cobalt. There is also the occasional anonymous cry of pain, which isn’t as unnerving as he thinks it should be.

Along the way, his vision and telepathy begin to coalesce from white-out into form, though the shapes have yet to make sense the way they once did. Color returns like ink bleeding through tissue, but when it reaches the levels he recalls, the saturation and intensity don’t halt. The colors are moving. The wings of Erik’s voice fan Charles’ face, blowing his hair out of his eyes.

“I’m told that if you stare long enough,” they tell him, Erik’s regard reflecting off jeweled carapaces, “your body won’t know what to do without you. Open your body’s eyes, Charles.”

Charles finds himself lying down on his bed, head resting in the cradle of Erik’s enlaced fingers. The Power himself leans over him, expression firmly inquisitive, hair undulating like Medusa’s snakes. Charles’ heart swells with newly coalescing knowledge. Erik is _his_. He is not alone.

“Will I ever lose you?”

Erik smiles gently and slips his hand out from under Charles’ head to place his warm palm over Charles’ ecstatic heart. “Even if I were to lose this form, I would still reside here.”

Charles’ heart feels like it will beat back against the Power’s hand in response. The telepath takes Erik’s wrist in his and presses it more tightly to his chest. “That’s too one-sided, Erik.”

Charles’ grave seriousness is lost on the Power. “Charles, I’ll always be all around you. I already am. I will be. I was. You just have this form to touch while I have it.”

Though Charles fights him, Erik pulls his hand from Charles’ chest, twists his wrist and catches Charles’ hand instead. He places the telepath’s hand on the side of his chiseled face. His thumb lies across Erik’s lips, his index finger dips below his eye socket’s ridge and his outer three fingers dot the Power’s brow.

“This is just matter,” Erik explains, his expression soft with a patient smile. As his lips move, Charles’ thumb moves with them. “The spirit is clad in matter and matter is a thing which exists within time. Time exists nowhere else. Time takes no toll on the spirit when it sheds form, but only wears down matter. Until I Manifested, I was endless. Only now do I inhabit a finite space. A material moment.”

As a telepath it is far easier to understand what Erik is trying to explain, but it’s no less confusing. The best advantage is the sense of having always known Erik. Even though, for the last few weeks, he has only watched the Power pass from one end of the cavernous station to the other.


End file.
